New VH1 Series Tells the Origin Story of Iconic, Viral YouTube Videos

For some YouTubers, a single video was all it took to catapult them to stardom. A new digital series from VH1 and “What’s Trending” aims to capture the stories of creators and what made them “Huge on the Tube.”

“We approach a YouTuber that has not just built a career, but definitely had one video that threw them in the spotlight,” series host Shira Lazar told the Daily Dot. “That’s a foundation for telling a bigger story. That one video is a bit of the entry way for it.”

The series will dig deeper into the success of various YouTube celebrities, similar to VH1’s “Behind the Music” franchise. The first episode features singer and dancer Todrick Hall, who explains the origin of his breakthrough “Cinderonce” video.

“I’d never met [Todrick] before, but there’s camaraderie when you see these people because they’re all connected to each other in some way or another,” Lazar said. “He’s such an outrageous personality. He taught me how to dance! To think about how excited he still is about what he does. A lot of people are doing this day in and day out on no budget, so for some of these creators to still be as enthusiastic as they were when they put up their first video. People get excited by excitement, they feed off of it.”

The series marks a new partnership between Lazar’s digital “What’s Trending” empire with television outlet VH1.